Tankers

The Israeli government moved Thursday to distance itself from one of the country's largest private conglomerates after embarrassing allegations emerged that the company violated U.S. sanctions against Iran by selling an oil tanker to an Iranian firm through an intermediary. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the U.S. Congress on Tuesday about the dangers of Iran and lambasted some nations for failing to do more to halt the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions, the State Department announced that the Israeli-owned Ofer Bros.

Material seized when Osama bin Laden was killed show that Al Qaeda considered attacking tanker ships and other marine infrastructure last summer in an effort to force up the price of oil and damage the U.S. economy, according to U.S. officials. The files don't suggest an attack at sea is imminent, or that terrorist planning progressed since last year, said Matt Chandler, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. But the FBI and Homeland Security officials issued an alert Friday to law enforcement and the energy industry.

They are not the most beautiful ships to take to the sea, unless you are a retired naval captain with seawater washing through his veins. For Nigerian sea captain Niyi Labinjo, his little fleet of four ships is his life. They're workhorses: ugly tankers a quarter of a century old or older, picked up cheap and designed for small coastal jobs, not to ply the high seas. But these workhorses rarely work. Like many other Nigerian-owned ships, they mostly lie at anchor while vessels flagged in places like Panama or St. Vincent and the Grenadines dominate Nigerian waters.

When the Air Force awarded a $35-billion aerial tanker contract to Boeing Co. last week, military officials weren't interested in knowing only how much it would cost the federal government to acquire 179 of the combat-ready refueling planes. They also wanted to know how much it would cost to operate the planes over their entire lifespan, which is estimated at 40 years. That helps explain why Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a 34-year veteran of Congress and a longtime expert on defense issues on Capitol Hill, called Thursday "the happiest day in my professional life.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. has won the $35-billion contract to build a fleet of aerial refueling tankers, possibly the culmination of a dramatic decade-long battle that the aerospace world has been following. The bitter fight between Airbus parent company European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., or EADS, and archrival Boeing. has been hard fought. There are tens of thousands of jobs at stake, and many in the defense industry believe that the lucrative tanker contract could be the last new major Pentagon purchase for years to come.

After a decade of embarrassing missteps and disputes, the Pentagon handed the first phase of a job-rich $35-billion contract to Chicago-based Boeing Co. to build a fleet of 179 aerial refueling tankers that carries the promise of work for an estimated 50,000 aerospace employees. In an announcement that took industry experts by surprise, word came down late Thursday that Boeing had bested archrival Airbus and its parent company European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., or EADS to build 18 planes for $3.5 billion.

One of the most hotly sought-after military contracts in U.S. history is expected to be issued Thursday, perhaps the finale in a scandal-ridden bureaucratic nightmare that has pitted two global aerospace titans in a high-stakes competition for a decade. At issue is a $35-billion prize purse to replace the Air Force's fleet of Eisenhower administration-era aerial tankers, which refuel warplanes while in flight. The Pentagon has twice awarded the contract, only to see its decision overturned amid accusations of underhanded politics and discriminatory rule-making.

By Chris Kraul Weather-beaten rancher Leonardo Bautista brings to mind the character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel who waited years in vain for a pension. Only Bautista is waiting for a new road, or any other benefit to filter down to those who live at ground zero of Colombia's oil boom. Every day, 150 crude-laden semitrailer trucks grind over his town's dirt road, raising dust and spewing oil. Bautista and his neighbors want a paved road to mitigate the noise and environmental damage, and to leave room for other vehicles, which often get muscled off course as the lumbering tankers swerve to avoid potholes.

For more than half a century, beachgoers have had their views of the Santa Monica Bay disturbed on a near-daily basis. What should be a pristine panorama of sky, sunlight and surf is interrupted by massive tankers unloading crude oil, which is then transported through a pipeline to the Chevron refinery in El Segundo. About 350 tankers each year offload more than 4 billion gallons of crude oil at the bay's offshore mooring. Now, Chevron's lease on state lands that house the offshore marine oil terminal is up for renewal.

Under intense questioning by House members, the former U.S. Forest Service commander who led the initial attack on last year's Station fire conceded Tuesday that a "window of opportunity" to contain the flames was lost when aircraft arrived two hours late on the critical second morning of the blaze. Members of the bipartisan congressional panel spent much of the four-hour-plus session in Pasadena grilling the now-retired commander and current Forest Service officials about the response to the fire, sometimes expressing frustration that they were not getting the full story.